Stock pads are worthless on track!

I had the EB PP to Road America this weekend. Not a great experience. It was far from an ideal weekend weather wise. The high was 38 deg (yes, Fahrenheit) yesterday, and it rained essentially all day. When I left on Thurs, they were forecasting some rain for Saturday too. In light of this, I didn't bother to swap in my track pads, and I put my Blizzak LM-32s (V speed rated) back on. As luck would have it, today actually turned out to be sunny and dry. In case anyone was wondering, winter tires are not ideal on a dry, sunny day :doh: But the real downer was the brakes. After two laps the pedal started getting soft. I thought this was strange, given my prior experience with my Porsches, but I kept going. By the 5th or 6th lap, I pushed the pedal clear to the floor braking for turn 1. That was it. Day was done for me. I've been doing HPDE for over 20 years and when I lose confidence in my brakes, I stop driving. When I came into the pits, the brakes were smoking pretty heavily. I know I boiled the fluid. It looks like fluid may have seeped out of the caliper, which seemed really odd too. The pedal is spongy, so I know I need to bleed them now. I sure hope I didn't damage any seals inside the caliper. That would suck

I will put Motul 660 in for my next track day, plus appropriate pads. I think I may also remove the inner dust shields. I can't see how these are a good idea. Eventually, I need to swap the rotors for "normal" inside vented ones, and install some cooling ducts.

I had the EB PP

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Stopped reading after that. 14" non Brembo brakes are not meant for the track on sustained high speed braking, no matter what the fluid or pad compound (which btw won't help that much given the rotor and caliper design).

IMHO you should be swapping out the whole setup, not trying to band aid it with pads and fluid if you plan on being competitive and driving aggressively to the car's full potential. If you're just out there to have fun, you'll be fine.

EFI said:

Stopped reading after that. 14" non Brembo brakes are not meant for the track on sustained high speed braking, no matter what the fluid or pad compound (which btw won't help that much given the rotor and caliper design).

IMHO you should be swapping out the whole setup, not trying to band aid it with pads and fluid if you plan on being competitive and driving aggressively to the car's full potential. If you're just out there to have fun, you'll be fine.

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We'll see. The Mustang is new to me, but I've been setting up Porsche brakes for track use for over 20 years. A little cooling goes a long way, as does appropriate pads and fluid. My '72 911 has 11" front rotors with tiny little calipers, 2" pads. It is fantastic under braking. You just gotta get the right stuff.

The issue is not so much the size of the rotors and calipers, but more so the design.

The inverted had design is a poor choice for cooling, so adding extra cooling capacity to the pads and/or fluids is only going to buy you a little extra time when the rotor itself gets hot and does not cool off.

My previous car, a 3700lb GTO with 500hp and 12.4" rotors and 2 piston PBR brakes on stock fluid and pads lasted a helluva lot longer than a 14" rotors 4 piston setup found in the GT or EB PP.

Yes, the outside vented rotor is stupid. I have never before seen a brake rotor designed like this. This is what I was referring to by getting some "normal" rotors.

Also, are you absolutely certain that the 4 piston calipers are not manufactured by Brembo? I thought I read somewhere that they were.

The previous gen (11-14) 4 piston calipers were Brembo, but no longer. I believe the S550 ones are made by Continental.

Either way, as you experienced, they are crap unless you swap the rotor design. I have not seen such 14" rear vented rotors for the S550 though.

I just found the Vorshlag info on their 2018 GT with 4 piston brakes. Not encouraging. My experience was exactly like theirs.

http://www.vorshlag.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8324&page=2

It's a little disappointing. I bought this car after reading several very glowing reviews of the EB PP, like the one in Automobile magazine in 2015 (they also thought the 4 pistons were Brembos). Here is an excerpt;

"The large Brembo brakes inspire confidence, too, responding progressively to stabs at the firm middle pedal. They encourage me to stay on the throttle just a bit longer on the back straight, where I hit triple digits before braking hard for a 90-degree right-hander. It’s only toward the very end of the day’s lapping that the brake pedal starts to go soft. I back off the pace for a few laps to cool down the brakes, and then carry on without a hitch."

http://www.automobilemag.com/news/2015-ford-mustang-ecoboost-first-time-at-the-track/

It's not the end of the world, but It's looking like I probably do need to shell out another $1300 for the 6 piston brakes to be able to comfortably drive this car on the track.

Your issue lies almost entirely with the pad. The rotor design doesn't help, but is not the primary cause.

BmacIL said:

Your issue lies almost entirely with the pad. The rotor design doesn't help, but is not the primary cause.

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Have you been satisfied with the 4 piston brakes on track? If so, what pads are you using?

EFI said:

Stopped reading after that. 14" non Brembo brakes are not meant for the track on sustained high speed braking, no matter what the fluid or pad compound (which btw won't help that much given the rotor and caliper design).

IMHO you should be swapping out the whole setup, not trying to band aid it with pads and fluid if you plan on being competitive and driving aggressively to the car's full potential. If you're just out there to have fun, you'll be fine.

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I took your advice. I just bought the Brembo 6 piston, 15" rotor setup. After reading the Vorshlag experience, I had to agree that it was probably futile to try and make these 4 piston brakes meet my needs. They look like serious brakes, but they are "all show and no stop".

SVO MkII said:

I took your advice. I just bought the Brembo 6 piston, 15" rotor setup. After reading the Vorshlag experience, I had to agree that it was probably futile to try and make these 4 piston brakes meet my needs. They look like serious brakes, but they are "all show and no stop".

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Vorshlag is a reputable company but their information regarding this is a bit misleading. Read through this thread, including some of the data posted on page 2 (detailing the piston area differences).

https://www.mustang6g.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101907

The 4 piston calipers are fine. They need a much better pad. I will let you know how Powerstop Track Day pads perform next month at Autobahn in Joliet, IL. Fwiw, they were really impressive when I was bedding them in. Back to back to back (10) 80-10 stops with no pauses and they only just started losing a smidge of bite on the last one. This is with Castrol SRF fluid. I will probably try G-LOC next time with fresh rotors, I just couldn't pass up the deal on these, especially given the reviews.

The rotor thing is legit and is a wtf Ford, but it will not cause the issues seen by Vorshlag or yourself. Small contribution. Their issue installing the 6 pistons without changing the MC is correlation, not causation, and the data supports that. [MENTION=22413]Optimum Performance[/MENTION]

Here is a pic of the caliper after one 30 min session at road america. It appears that fluid seeped from the 4 bolt holes. Both calipers showed this. I have never seen this before with either my 911 or my 944 Turbo, both of which get pushed HARD at the track. Yes, a better pad might result in less heat transfer to the caliper, but the caliper shouldn't be weeping fluid out of every orifice. This does not inspire confidence in the manufacture, or design of this caliper. I do feel better having a "genuine" Brembo caliper up front. And when you push that pedal going in to turn 1 at Road America, at roughly 130 mph, you need confidence!

SVO MkII said:

Here is a pic of the caliper after one 30 min session at road america. It appears that fluid seeped from the 4 bolt holes. Both calipers showed this. I have never seen this before with either my 911 or my 944 Turbo, both of which get pushed HARD at the track. Yes, a better pad might result in less heat transfer to the caliper, but the caliper shouldn't be weeping fluid out of every orifice. This does not inspire confidence in the manufacture, or design of this caliper. I do feel better having a "genuine" Brembo caliper up front. And when you push that pedal going in to turn 1 at Road America, at roughly 130 mph, you need confidence!

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That is certainly concerning and very odd.

Assuming it all works right (I've never looked into it as I have a GT PP car), you'll be quite happy with the GT PP brakes up front. They are much better than the Brembo 4-pot setup on the 11-14 GTs, and on my 14 I even had brake cooling hoses, track pads, Motul, etc. My current Mustang is on OEM PP pads, no extra cooling, and Motul fluid and just plain works. Better than my friend's 981 Cayman S, in fact, just for a Porsche reference (the Mustang used to be his, and it says something when you buy a Porsche and miss the brakes on your Mustang). Also, he ran a few track days on the OEM Ford fluid and had no issue, we just flushed in Motul because it's cheap insurance that can't hurt.

All that to say, I think you made a good choice that should solve your braking issues. I don't doubt that you could make the OEMs work, but they'll never work as well as the 6-pot kit. Especially in terms of confidence, which is one of the most important things for enjoying a track day. If you run R-comps and are always on big tracks like Road America, you may need to upgrade pads, but I've had no issue with the OEM pads on Pilot Super Sports.

So I am a bit concerned reading this thread and hope someone can offer clarification. I am ordering a 2019 GT PP2 expressly for doing autocross and track days. Are the 6-piston brakes up front truly Brembos, and if so, are they capable of standing up to the abuse of track days? I planned on upgrading the pads and fluid as a matter of course.

I am getting out of a Focus ST that I autocross because the costs of upgrading that platform to something that can be safely tracked were adding up too fast on a $20K car.

thanks in advance for any input/advice